Bombings in Iraq kill at least 32

BAGHDAD -- One minute, Salam Munim was waiting patiently yesterday among a crowd of recruits, eager to join the Iraqi army's next major offensive against Sunni insurgents in his home province, Diyala.

BAGHDAD -- One minute, Salam Munim was waiting patiently yesterday among a crowd of recruits, eager to join the Iraqi army's next major offensive against Sunni insurgents in his home province, Diyala.

The next, a suicide bomber blew up, and just minutes later, another did, too, at the Iraqi army base in an eastern suburb of Baqouba. Twenty-seven people were killed and 68 hurt, Iraqi security officials said.

The U.S. military put the toll at 20 dead and 55 wounded. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.

"I cannot forget the mingled smell of sand and flesh," Munim said from a hospital, where he was being treated for shrapnel wounds.

In addition, the Associated Press reported that a U.S. soldier was killed yesterday by an explosive in Diyala province. Bombings in the northern city of Mosul and in Baghdad claimed at least 11 more lives.

A member of the Diyala security-operations command said Sunni and Shiite tribal leaders had been asked to send recruits to join an offensive against insurgents who have terrorized the eastern Iraqi province.

Munim said Iraqi officers were organizing the recruits at the main entrance to Saad base when the explosions went off.

Diyala, an ethnically and religiously mixed province stretching from the eastern outskirts of Baghdad to the Iranian border, has experienced a lot of bloodshed in recent years. Sunni insurgents loyal to al-Qaida in Iraq declared Baqouba the capital of their self-styled Islamic caliphate, and their founder, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a U.S. airstrike near the city in June 2006.

The U.S. military has conducted repeated operations to clear out insurgent sanctuaries in Diyala, using some of the 28,500 additional troops deployed to Iraq last year. With the last of the additional U.S. troops scheduled to leave this month, the Shiite-led Iraqi government is promising its own military campaign to finish the job. Remaining U.S. forces also are expected to participate.

It would be the fifth Iraqi-led crackdown in the country since March, when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched a drive to reassert government authority in areas controlled by Shiite and Sunni militants.

An ongoing offensive in Mosul is credited with reducing the number of attacks there by half since it began in mid-May. But as in Diyala, insurgents there have hit back with lethal bombings in recent weeks.

Three explosions in less than two hours yesterday targeted Iraqi security forces in different parts of Mosul, police and hospital officials said. Nine people died and 17 were wounded, they said. The U.S. military had information on only two incidents, but said 12 people were killed and seven wounded.

In other violence yesterday, Iraq's electricity minister, Karim Wahid, escaped unharmed from a roadside bombing in Baghdad that damaged a vehicle in his convoy and killed two civilian bystanders, the Interior Ministry said.

Meanwhile, an attempt to push through legislation needed to hold Iraq's provincial elections Oct. 1 ended in disarray yesterday when Kurdish lawmakers walked out of Parliament over voting provisions for the disputed city of Kirkuk.